The Packington is an extraordinary inner London housing estate twice demolished and rebuilt in less than fifty years. AiR led a six year cross generational neighbourhood exchange, Pack *Art, which included a mass string phone, a mobile print-making trailer, a film of residents waving at each other, a recording studio/trolley, a meanwhile gallery in the ex-marketing suite, a cinema for one household at a time in a shipping container, open mic performance nights. A permanent living artwork co-produced with residents, ‘I Can Believe in Things Which are True’ by Dmitri Galitzine was installed in October 2019.
During the global pandemic we continued to make work alongside each other on doorsteps and pavements, in playgrounds and parks, through ‘Close Distance’, and in 2021 ‘In Colour’ asked ‘what would you like to say to your neighbour?’ and ‘what would you like your neighbour to say to you?’. Through ‘On Paper’ we published two books – ‘That’s not how I remember it’ offers an insider view of the unwritten rules of community on a sixties estate and ‘Packington Works’ explores the possibilities of making art with your neighbours by gathering Claudia Janke’s multiple works made on the Packington over two decades. Our final series of interventions together ‘Still Light’ looked into the future of home and neighbourhood.
Some of our questions during at the Pack were: What is an ‘art that comes to meet us’? Where are the edges of place in an increasingly digital world? What does this particular local reflect about the bigger picture in times of climate crisis, global pandemic, austerity and Brexit? What happens when art is asked to be a hook for something else? What can we make together in close proximity as we practice social distance?
Made in public in cooperation and collaboration, the artworks were things to notice and prompts for unexpected conversations – between neighbours, passers-by, strangers. As the Packington found new feet, there was an accompanying sense of loss for an old place that is literally and emotionally buried beneath the new. The artists’ processes opened space for the Packington communities to consider this huge moment of change and find individual and collective visibility as the last of the 791 households unpacked.
This Packington staying developed from a commission by Hyde Housing to meet a Section 106 condition with support from Arts Council England. The programme was supported by Hyde, Islington Community Chest, National Lottery Awards for All, Heritage Lottery Fund, LBI councillors, and Arts Council England Emergency Funding, Just Ask Services, Cleanscapes, City Plumbing. Thank you to Pollard Thomas Edwards, Islington Council, Tintype Gallery, Cubitt, Richard Cloudesley School, St James Church, ARC, Pophams Bakery, Waterside Adventure Playground for their generosity and cooperation. AiR artists at the Packington included Janette Parris, Dmitri Galitzine, Claudia Janke, Claudia Schenk, Shepherd Manyika, Ross Belton, Yasmine Yer, Sam Blunden, Finn Thompson, Emily Stapleton Jefferis, Charise Johnson, Suki Chan, Felix Dean, Charlene Sandy, Kally Laurence, Heiba Lamara, Shelagh Mccarthy, Maeve Laurence, Rubie Green, Anna Hart. The White Pube were critics-in residence 2018/19, 2021, 2023. The astute Pack*Art Panel co-produced the programme with us – over the years residents Jon Okolo, Theresa Okolo, Charise Johnson, Sheyma Buali, Yasemin Der, Liz Chambers, Jimel Lopini, Sara Davies, Karol Malcolm-Piper, Toni Lee.
